An experimental discussion about reading, writing, sex, death, and headcolds. Perhaps some freewriting, internet memes, and the occasional game, too.

8.12.2005

Night: The Time of Life

There's something about the night that speaks to me. It stirs my soul and reawakens my sense of self. Starry nights. Moonless nights. Overcast nights. Whether I am standing on my porch, padding barefoot through the grass next to my driveway, or slipping out the door to take an illicit walk through the neighborhood, I am more alive at night.

Daytime is fine. The sun, warm on flesh, feeds my biological needs. It makes the grass grow and warms the earth. It brings out the squirrels and rabbits that chase each other through my yard and around the trees. But the daytime belongs to everyone. The energy of civilization trying to catch up with itself is deadening.

By the bright light of day, I know what I have to accomplish. But in the dark, I know who I am.

5 Comments:

You're not weird at all. (Well, there IS the possibility that we're both weird...oh well). I've devoted my blog, The Clarity of Night, to exactly what you are talking about. See if you agree with my take on it.

We're probably both weird. But that's okay. Life would be boring if everyone were the same. I enjoyed your blog, especially the tombstone entry. Another weirdness about me: I love old cemeteries and old tombstones. They're a link to the past and a time that was.

I will be posting a series of fictionalized (kind of) vignettes about Grandview Cemetery in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It is a huge mountaintop cemetery which spans a great portion of the years since the settlement of that area. I often used to visit the old sections of that cemetery (including at night).

Beyond that one, two other cemeteries really stand out for me. First is a cemetery in East Aurora, New York (home of the Roycroft campus--an arts & crafts community from the early 1900's). It is a very sleepy and shaded place and has one particularly odd grave of an infant tucked back along the treeline. The second would be the cemetery in Fayatteville, NC where the pictures on my blog were taken. My friend and I went back there near nightfall, and the sounds of the night insects were amazing. Nothing like that here in PA. We just have half-hearted crickets and katydids.